¶ 1Leave a comment on paragraph 10Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories offers recommendations to help ensure the physical and intellectual well being of born-digital materials transferred from donors to archival repositories. The main body of the report surveys the primary issues and concerns related to born-digital acquisitions and is intended for a broad audience with varying levels of interest and expertise, including donors, dealers, and archival repositories. Each of the following sections provides an overview of the key issues and concludes with two lists of recommendations: one for donors and dealers, and a second for repository staff.

Post-Acquisition Review by the Repository focuses on staff assessment of the condition and contents of digital media and files after their arrival at a repository, as well as issues related to retention, disposal, and neglect.

¶ 6Leave a comment on paragraph 60
Appendices provide more specific information about how to prepare for the unexpected and possible staffing costs, as well as ready-to-use checklists that incorporate recommendations from throughout the report. These recommendations are not meant to be universal and do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the co-authors’ institutions. Rather, they offer broad, useful guidance for donors, dealers, and repository staff involved in the acquisition of born-digital materials. In order to ensure that born-digital materials arrive at repositories in good condition and accompanied by appropriate documentation, it is vital to convince donors, dealers, repository staff, and others to be mindful of how they handle, document, ship, and receive digital media and files. The larger benefit and concern, as always, is the preservation of important cultural resources. The following recommendations will help archival repositories, donors, and dealers implement practical improvements that will ultimately lead to richer acquisitions.

This is more of a comment on the whole document, regarding licensing. I’d strongly suggest considering a different Creative Commons license – perhaps CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. I find the use of a noncommercial use only license problematic here because there might be a dealer motivated to share this with potential customers (both repositories and donors). I’d also recommend rethinking the no derivative works aspect of the license.

This is more of a comment on the whole document, regarding licensing. I’d strongly suggest considering a different Creative Commons license – perhaps CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. I find the use of a noncommercial use only license problematic here because there might be a dealer motivated to share this with potential customers (both repositories and donors). I’d also recommend rethinking the no derivative works aspect of the license.

Recent Comments in this Document

Are there any examples of these various policies, procedures and guidelines that might be included in an appendix for a repository to reference when drafting their own? These are central to a successful handling of born-digital records, and many–if not most–repositories and donors/dealers will not have current policies, procedures and guidelines in place yet.

What are some examples of “technical specialists” that a donor (or repository) might want to employ? I think this is addressed more in 2.1.1, perhaps in reference there to the “digital specialists” who may be able to help. It’s a good idea to address this issue and strongly encourage all parties to take extra precaution with outdated hardware, software and file formats.

Data documenting assessment of digital media physical condition should not be stored only in the closed donor, purchase, or acquisition files. As this section states, physical condition may impact preservation planning. When planning, repository administrators should be able to compare physical condition assessment data against a range of other factors like intellectual access, research value, interest, etc. For example, the Archivists’ Toolkit has assessment records that allow one to assign numerical values for condition of material, physical access, intellectual access, interest, research value, as well as a series of other fields. These records can then be reported and analyzed in mass.

While appraisal might be familiar in the sense used by archivists and appraisal might be familiar to some of the intended readers of this document, I suspect it might be problematic for donors and dealers, who may only think of appraisal in the sense of appraisal of monetary value.

Additionally, at this phase, an assessment might include an analysis of the relative uniqueness of the born-digital content. How much of the content is only to be found on this particular drive or storage medium? How much of the content is mirrored elsewhere in the world? What rights does the donor have to donate the born-digital content in question to the repository?

Noting the the use of ‘assessment’ and ‘evaluated’ it occurred to me that this section is dealing with appraisal of collections. I wonder if it is worth mentioning that word in this section to resonate with soem readers.

The last sentence in this paragraph refers to “preservation for access in the longer-term” as an additional option when screening isn’t feasible. It might be helpful to clarify what this option entails and implies and how it is distinct from the previously mentioned access restrictions (which can be governed by dates/years passed since creation) and embargo periods.